In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, learn how a writer with a single published comic took over Swamp Thing instead of Neil Gaiman

Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the eight hundred and fourteenth installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false. As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends. Click here for the first part of this installment's legends.

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COMIC LEGEND:

Doug Wheeler was a pseudonym for another comic book writer and/or editor

STATUS:

False

Interestingly enough, this was the legend that an anonymous reader wrote in to me to ask about and when I started to work on it, I realized that I really should first discuss what Neil Gaiman would have done had he taken over Swamp Thing from Rick Veitch with Jamie Delano as had been originally planned. So that was the first legend in this installment, and now we can get into Doug Wheeler, the guy who took over writing Swamp Thing from Rick Veitch instead of Gaiman and Delano and had to take over in the middle of Veitch's aborted storyline!

Wheeler only had a single major comic book credit on the 1988 Comico Christmas Special before he got the gig on Swamp Thing and so the anonymous e-mailer noted that they were discussing the topic with some friends recently and they decided upon the theory that Wheeler had to have been a pseudonym used by a DC editor or staffer, and that would explain why Wheeler has also not done many comic books after his Swamp Thing run and why Wheeler has an almost non-existent online presence.

RELATED: How Neil Gaiman Almost Wrote Swamp Thing - and Why He Didn't

Right off the bat, I don't think people quite get how many comic book writers and artists don't have online presences. I don't think that that is a sign of much of anything, really. I often see comic book creators online looking to reconnect with their former colleagues and friends and even THEY have trouble, at times. In fact, that was precisely what Michael Eury was doing six years ago when he was trying to reconnect with Doug Wheeler for an article in Eury's brilliant Back Issue magazine for TwoMorrows. Eury had edited Wheeler in the aforementioned "single published work before Wheeler did Swamp Thing" and wanted to talk to Wheeler about the comic for Back Issue's modern comic Christmas issue.

In that issue, Comico's former head, Diana Schutz, explained how she came to hire an unknown writer to do Comico's 1988 Christmas Special.

Comico Christmas Special

As it turned out, while Doug Wheeler hadn't had many other comics PUBLISHED, but besides some short stories in Comico's Alien Encounters, he also had a couple of stories accepted for Stephen Bissette and John Totleben's then-new Taboo series (they just never ended up getting published) and Bissette had specifically recommended Wheeler to Schutz and so she looked for a project for him at Comico. Meanwhile, Comico was doing an Alien Encounters Christmas special and Wheeler tried to think of stories to pitch for that special (it was only for a couple of pages) and none of his ideas worked for the small amount of pages, but the process ended up with him having a bunch of Christmas story ideas and so Wheeler pitched Schutz on a Christmas special and she agreed and the 1988 Comico Christmas Special is quite good, with stories drawn by Tim Sale (of a future where the government hunts down anyone who mentions Christmas outside the Christmas season)...

and Steve Rude and Al Williamson (aliens come to Earth in the future and learn about Santa Claus and whether he was real or not)...

RELATED: Did Marvel Force the Thunderbolts to Kill Off One of Its Youngest Members?

Well, in Amazing Heroes #182, Jeff Lang interviewed Wheeler and he explained that when Karen Berger suddenly needed someone to replace Veitch, she had contacted both Totleben and Bissette (who, of course, helped reshape Swamp Thing with Alan Moore earlier in the decade) separately for writer suggestions and they BOTH separately mentioned Wheeler (among others, but he was on both of their lists, so that stood out to Berger).

Wheeler noted that he actually asked Totleben and Bissette if they thought him taking over the book would piss off Veitch, who Wheeler had met before and they both told him no and so he figured it was okay to take over the book. At the time, Wheeler had no idea why Veitch was leaving so suddenly or why Gaiman and Delano backed out (by the way, it is also important to note that our idea of writers being "unknown" is often influenced by their LATER work. In other words, when Alan Moore was hired for Swamp Thing, he was basically an "unknown" himself, as was Grant Morrison when they got hired on Animal Man and Neil Gaiman when he was hired on Black Orchid).

When Wheeler later read about the full story, he noted, "I looked at [an article about the controversy] and I just went white. I thought, 'What am I walking into?' It was scary enough knowing I'd have to compete with what Alan Moore and Rick Vetich had done before, knowing it was a make-it-or-break-it kind of move because if you screw it up, people are going to remember you as the person who screwed up Swamp Thing and the career is over. On the other hand, I didn't have anything else going and I was willing to take that risk."

Wheeler took over the book with former Swamp Thing artist, Tom Yeates.

But the regular art team on most of Wheeler's run was Pat Broderick and Alfred Alcala and when Wheeler was fired soon after #100, in #109 (by which point Mike Hoffman was drawing the book), Wheeler complained about Broderick's work on the way out in The Comics Journal #139, noting that it "made me look like a hack...I know that sounds like a bitter person striking out in revenge, which it is." Broderick had issues with Wheeler's scripts, as well, but Broderick noted that he thought that the book just never recovered from the Veitch controversy and new editor Stuart Moore simply wanted to bring in a fresh new creative team.

Wheeler was a computer analyst in his regular gig at the time and he did not leave that job while working on Swamp Thing, so I imagine that he just stuck with that gig while doing some indie work on Negative Burn in the 1990s.

Sadly, though, Wheeler's fears of the gig being a risky one was probably correct. It was a very tough position for a new writer. It was basically like being set up to fail.

Thanks to Jeff Lang, Doug Wheeler and Pat Broderick for the information and thanks to the anonymous e-mailer for the suggestion!

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PART THREE SOON!

Check back soon for part 3 of this installment's legends!

Feel free to send suggestions for future comic legends to me at either cronb01@aol.com or brianc@cbr.com

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